This invention relates to resilient bumpers for the sides of vehicles and, more particularly, to a resilient bumper for releasable attachment to the side doors of a vehicle for protection of the vehicle against damage from impact of a door of another vehicle or the like.
To conserve the amount of space required for parking vehicles, owners of parking ramps and parking lots, as well as civil engineers who design municipal parking areas, make the sizes of individual parking places relatively narrow. As a result, adjacent vehicles are usually so close that an uncarefully opened door of one vehicle will come into contact with the side of an adjacent vehicle. If the contact is sufficiently violent, the finish of one or both vehicles may be damaged, a dent may be made in the side of the contacted vehicle, or both. While many vehicles are provided with a fixed body side molding intended to protect the side of the vehicle, such moldings are often not in the appropriate position to prevent damage from contact with another vehicle door or the like.
Flexibility in positioning a side bumper is, accordingly, desirable. It is also desirable, however, to prevent theft of the side bumper from the vehicle. Moreover, vehicles vary greatly in the size and shape and contour of their sides and doors so that any side bumper must be adaptable to be usable with the variety of different vehicles.
A number of attempts have been made to provide side bumpers for vehicles. One such bumper is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 3,472,546, which teaches a side bumper made of resilient material to the end portions of which are secured retaining hooks for attachment of the side bumper to edges of a door panel of the vehicle. Another side bumper is taught in U.S. Pat. No. 2,734,765, which uses a combination of suction cups and hooks for releasable attachment to a side door of a vehicle. A side bumper which uses both suction cups and magnets, and which is releasably held at edges of the vehicle doors, is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,707,008, which can be used on both ferrous and nonferrous vehicles.
None of the prior art devices, however, are of adjustable length to accommodate a variety of vehicle door sizes and shapes. Further, while the '008 patent does describe a locking device which will prevent theft of the device off of a vehicle, the locking device is relatively inflexible to anything but vertical edge contours of vehicle doors.
The present invention includes a means for releasably locking the device to a vehicle having other than vertical door edge contours.